


open up your filthy hands

by werepope (quiteparadise)



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fashion & Models, Domestic, Ficlet, Fluff, M/M, Zayn is beautiful and it's a problem
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-07
Updated: 2014-07-07
Packaged: 2018-02-07 21:29:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 622
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1914504
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/quiteparadise/pseuds/werepope
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Fashion AU. Sorta. Mostly just Ziam nonsense.</p><p>Title from "Dirty Nails" by XTRMST. Which is in no way indicative of anything in this drabble.</p>
            </blockquote>





	open up your filthy hands

Zayn is beautiful.  Professionally.  It's what he does.  And that's weird for a couple reasons, not the least of which being that such a thing exists at all, people who are professionally good-looking.  But more than that, it's weird that Zayn does it.  Which isn't to say that he's not up to it.  He is, obviously, very beautiful.  Liam thought so long before anyone else seemed to take any serious note of it.  No, what's weird about it is seeing him condensed that way.  Simplified.  Pushed down into two dimensions on glossy magazine paper or billboard ads.  That's what's really weird about the whole thing.

Liam understands the fashion industry.  Understands it as well as he ever intends to, anyway, from one step outside the door.  It's a lot of pretension and fuckwittery, really.  A strange mix of shallowness and art, which as he understands it is supposed to be about depth and reflection and introspection.  But, well, it is an industry, after all.  Shit happens.

Honestly, he'd be a lot more fucked up about the whole thing if Zayn gave a shit.  If anyone was going to be petulant about the happy marriage of money and art, it'd be him.  He was a fine arts student before he got "discovered."  Liam had suffered through more than one discussion about the pursuance of art in an industrious society, and the fine line between creating and producing, and the starving artist cliche that all of his art mates lived up to, de facto, because they were uni students.

Now fashion houses are paying Zayn big bucks to be a canvas for other people's art.  And maybe it should bother him but it doesn't, so Liam doesn't let it bother him either.  He tries, at least.  Some days harder than others.

Today Zayn rolls out of bed at eleven and zombie shuffles into the bathroom and pisses with the door open, because he and Liam have been at this way to long to still have boundaries, let alone privacy.

Liam stands in the hall to ask if he wants tea.  He watches Zayn scoop his glasses up off of the edge of the sink and not wash his hands.  Watches Zayn rub a palm against his scruff and try to decide if this is the day he has to shave.  Watches Zayn stick his tongue out, grimace, and pick up his toothbrush.

And this is why it bothers Liam sometimes, seeing Zayn in print.  Because someone who picks striking faces out of a crowd saw Zayn on campus one day, in his beanie and boots and Liam's flannel, and thought _yes_.  Because someone with a business card looked at a polaroid of Zayn and thought _yes_.  Because now he's shirtless on bus shelter adverts, in a city where any flat surface is space for some company or another tries to open your wallet by sparking your hunger.  Because people walking down the street flick their eyes over Zayn's surface and think _yes_.

Zayn leans down to spit in the sink and Liam kisses the nape of his neck.  Zayn straightens, smile dented around his toothbrush, and if Liam's hand on his waist is maybe a bit proprietary, well, so be it.  Because millions of people have looked at an ink and paper facsimile of Zayn and thought, but they don't get.  They don't get Zayn's bleary, gold-green morning gaze or the taste of the pillow crease denting his cheek or the answering sleep warm heat of his fingers on their thigh, pleased and maybe a bit proprietary.

"Cuppa?" Liam asks.

Zayn grunts assent.  He resumes brushing the taste of hard sleep out of his mouth.  Liam pats his ribs and returns to the kitchen.


End file.
